


Still Wish You'd Speak Your Mind

by ohstardust



Category: Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Angst, Bad Decisions, F/M, Smoking, Swearing, god there's so much angst in this i don't know whether to cry or drink a bottle of wine, she's hurt and he's dumb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 06:42:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18889243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohstardust/pseuds/ohstardust
Summary: Standing atop a too tall building, chain smoking away hurt, denial and regret, only hurts more when you're faced with the root of the problem. Sebastian thought he'd made the right decision, Amber thought it was the wrong one, and both ended up hurt.Blinking out into the diminishing skyline she took another drag, she squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, her teeth working furiously over the skin around her thumb and she was so sure she was going to throw up. She didn’t want this, not today, not after a few glasses of wine, not when she’d spent all evening chain smoking his favourite cigarettes.





	Still Wish You'd Speak Your Mind

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a couple of years ago about Jack Lowden, and although I posted it on Tumblr, it never made it to AO3. It's one of my favourite things that I've written so I edited it to feature Sebastian so I could share it on here.
> 
> I hope you enjoy my sleep deprived, angst fuelled, writing.
> 
> Title credit: We Need A Word by We Are Scientists (Strongly recommend listening to this whilst reading)
> 
> Please let me know if you liked it (or not) and drop me some kudos!.

“What are you doing here?” All it took was the rhythm of his footsteps, and his presence at this stupid party, to know it was him. She hadn’t dared to glance back at him.  
  
Her eyes focused on the setting sun of the late summer’s evening, the horizon a bold fusion of multiple pink and purple hues. It would have been beautiful if she wasn’t tired, pissed off and frustrated.  
  
Amber placed the cigarette between her lips and inhaled, her eyes unfocused before softly closing as she exhaled.  
  
Sebastian’s throat cleared and she could hear him nervously licking his lips, mouth dry and nervous, sounds she was all too familiar with, “Chace invited me, I’ve just finished filming.”  
  
His voice stuttered out small and it made her heart clench slightly until she quickly reminded her heart that he was to blame, he was the one who ruined everything.  
  
“Right, it’s probably me who shouldn’t be here,” she flicked the ash onto the ground below her and settled firmly against the railing on the building’s communal roof terrace.  
  
“I didn’t say that.”  
  
“You thought it though, didn’t you? Thought how I shouldn’t be encroaching into your personal life anymore than I already have done, thought that I should have cut ties with all of our friends because you knew them first?” She began chewing on her thumb, a horrible habit she couldn’t shake when nervous, just another bad habit in her ever-growing list. Like smoking, a habit she’d picked up from Sebastian many moons ago.  
  
“You know I’d never expect, or even think, of that.”  
  
“I’m not sure what I know anymore, everything I thought I understood, and believed, turned out to be utter shit, didn’t it?”  
  
“I never lied to you.” His hands scrubbed over his face, missing his beard that he’d shaved off yesterday and feeling bare without it.  
  
“The whole thing was a lie Sebastian, it had to be. You couldn’t just do that to someone you loved.”  
  
“Don’t make it past tense.”  
  
Amber’s voice raised in annoyance, sure that there must be some hidden agenda or he was just playing with her for fun, because this was beyond cruel, “Don’t you dare, you didn’t mean it then and you don’t mean it now.”  
  
“Will you at least look at me?”  
  
She wasn’t sure whether she was too furious to face him, or if she knew herself too well, knew that her resolve would break and she’d crumble. He’d always had that effect on her. Amber had known him for eight years and she caved every time he asked her to do something, or say something, or to even look at him. Her problem had always been being unable to say no to him.  
  
Blinking out into the diminishing skyline she took another drag, she squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, her teeth working furiously over the skin around her thumb and she was so sure she was going to throw up. She didn’t want this, not today, not after a few glasses of wine, not when she’d spent all evening chain smoking his favourite cigarettes.  
  
Her heart was pounding in her ears, so loud that she jumped at the contact of Sebastian’s skin touching hers, his footsteps unheard. Amber’s first thought was to snatch her hand away from him, perhaps slap him and bruise his face like endless nights of crying and heartbreak had bruised her everything. Leave him with marks that matched the purple beneath her eyes that came from lack of sleep some months ago. It was the least he deserved. Instead she left it there for a few moments, curled with his and she gripped tight, those feelings flooding back to her of happiness, of her world that was once so consumed by him.  
  
Sebastian nudged her with his shoulder, unsure, and she briefly turned to meet his gaze.  
  
Amber’s first observation was how utterly tired he looked, she knew what long filming schedules looked like on him, the toll it took, but this seemed different, he seemed  _wrecked._  
  
And she despised how much she wanted to wrap him up in her arms and hold him, let him rest on her for a while, because in this light, on this night, he looked like the Sebastian she first knew, the one she fell in love with. He looked so young and definitely not all of his thirty-some years.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, if she hadn’t been paying such close attention, she’d have missed his words.  
  
“What are you apologising for?”  
  
“Us - everything. I’m sorry for being selfish and thinking I was making the right decision.”  
  
“And wasn’t it?”  
  
“We both know it wasn’t.”  
  
“I really don’t know that, it was your call to make. I didn’t ask you to choose,  _you_ gave yourself an ultimatum and you chose the outcome. I was the innocent bystander who got her world thrown upside down in the process.”  
  
“I know that, I really do.”  
  
“What hurts me the most is that you clearly didn’t trust that I’d stand by you. You thought I’d run at the first sign of trouble, you stupidly thought that I - what? Didn’t love you enough? Was me thinking that I was going to marry you not enough commitment and faith? Because that’s what I thought, I was so  _fucking_ naive Sebastian, I thought one day we’d be a family, we’d expand and we’d be happy.” Amber’s voice choked on the end of her sentence, her eyes were watering yet she refused to acknowledge the few tears that had slipped. She wanted him to know how much he’d hurt her, because apparently he didn’t realise how much she’d valued their relationship, and  _him._  
  
He raised his hand to her face, thumb jutting out to wipe away her tears, but she turned her head away from him. She wasn’t ready for that.  
  
“My parents have been asking about you,” she bitterly laughed, “think we’re still  _friends,_ didn’t have the heart to tell them otherwise. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them that you didn’t choose me, that I wasn’t good enough.”  
  
His heart shattered as he heard the sobs she was trying so hard to suppress, “You were always good enough,  _too_ good. I was failing and I couldn’t give you what you deserved.”  
  
“Yet you thought I deserved all of this? C’mon Sebastian, that’s the oldest line in the book.”  
  
“I’m so fucking sorry,” he didn’t care that he was crying on his friends roof, or that he was breaking down in front of his ex-girlfriend, he couldn’t cope with what he’d done, how he’d absolutely ruined her. “You didn’t deserve any of this.”  
  
“Then why did you do it? I keep asking myself the same question and every time it’s my fault because I can’t imagine why else you’d have thrown four years away. Was I just good enough to keep the bed warm for the beginning of your career, until you’d advanced enough to get an upgrade?”  
  
Sebastian shook with his hurt, his tongue licking away his tears and he grabbed hold of her hands to make her face him, he had to tell her, “That night, the one before It all ended, the dinner and candles and everything, I was going to propose to you -“ a strangled sob escaped her throat, and if Sebastian hasn’t been holding her, she’d have buckled. “I was going to ask you to spend the rest of your life with me.”  
  
“I don’t understand, you just - you don’t - you don’t go from being ready to settle down with someone to ending the relationship twenty four hours later. Why didn’t you do it?”  
  
He’d spent countless nights going over this conversation in his head, over time there were multiple outcomes, some he could foresee and others not, right now he had no idea where he was going with this, or how she’d respond. He just knew that she had the right to hear this.  
  
“I received a film offer that day, and you had been telling me how nice it was to have me home for a while, and how much you’d missed me. I was so close to turning it down for you, and I suddenly panicked, I realised that I’d turn down any role for you, I’d end my career if you asked me to, and that terrified me. I’d worked so hard to get where I was and it felt wrong to view my career so flippantly.”  
  
“That’s not fair, I’d never have asked you to do those things, all I did was support you!” Sebastian flinched as Amber banged her hand down on the railing in anger, or rather frustration, she wasn’t quite sure how she was feeling at this moment, but whatever it was, it was strong.  
  
“I know! But what if more offers came through? If I spent more time away from home? If I hardly saw you? You can’t say that you wouldn’t resent me for that.”  
  
“Be that as it may, I loved you and that would have been enough for me. Now I just resent you for choosing your career over me, for thinking that we couldn’t all co-exist together. You and acting are a package deal, that’s what I signed up to the moment I met you.”  
  
He audibly swallowed and lowered his tone, ashamed, “I thought it was the right decision for both of us.”  
  
“You never should have made a decision on my behalf, you didn’t have the right to do that when it concerned my future too.”  
  
Sebastian was exhausted and he reluctantly rested his forehead on her shoulder. Against Amber’s better judgement, she raised her right arm to loop around his neck and pull him closer.  
  
She hated how he’d made her feel the past eight months, how wretched life without him had been, but her mind couldn’t stop playing out all their best times together, the laughter, the kisses, the sex, the love. Every positive thing their relationship had created in her mind.  
  
“I wish I could turn the clocks back and stop from making the stupidest decision of my life, but I can’t and I have to live with that.”  
  
“You do, and so do I,” her sigh was weak and void of any weight but she was tired of fighting, tired of hating him, or at least convincing herself that she did. Slowly she was beginning to understand why he did it, even if she didn’t agree, and it still infuriated her, “but maybe we can live through it together as friends.”  
  
“We’ll never be just friends again.” He briefly pressed his lips to her neck and dropped his head down again.  
  
“We can for now, I’m not saying you’re forgiven or that we can pick up where we left off, but we can be friends. If the future has different plans then so be it, but for now we can at least try to gain some semblance of normality because I really fucking miss you Stan.”  
  
“I really fucking miss you too, Thorne.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Tumblr [ohstardust](https://ohstardust.tumblr.com) if you wanna chat about characters, writing or just a general chit chat.


End file.
